What’s up with the Grand Challenges Crochet Coral Community? Well…
When the fall semester ended in mid-December 2020, it had been nine months since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and Vassar went virtual. The world had changed; we had changed; what it meant to be a community, a student, and a professor had changed. In our new virtual world it was easier to chat but harder to connect, and so building community became ever more important but increasingly difficult.
Heading into winter break, we (the Grand Challenges team!) wanted to come up with a way to virtually connect people and give everyone a chance to engage with the campus community. The question was how could we design a project that would be fun, relaxed, easy to do on Zoom, and somewhat educational — all while focusing on community. It was then that the Vassar College Community Crochet Coral Reef Project was born. (Or reborn, I should say; this was the 2.0 version of another event from ~10 years ago).
Taking inspiration from Margaret and Christine Wertheim’s work on a crochet coral project that began in 2005 (see Margaret speak in the Ted Talk below!), we decided to organize our own coral community. Anyone could sign up regardless of level and we would send them supplies, help teach them how to crochet, and provide a space to meet up virtually to connect and learn about a variety of topics from coral biology to hyperbolic geometry, activist art, and mythologies in science. At the end of the project during the spring semester, we planned to build a display reef on campus and bring together all the individual pieces created across the country in one colorful statement.
As it turns out, this idea of building a community coral reef was a popular way to bring people together; as soon as we sent out the information, people started responding to our Google form and pretty soon we had over 50 participants signed up. Then over 75. Then 90. We started mailing out supplies (the women at the post office got to know Rick pretty well after seeing him so much!). Then, as 2021 began, we started holding our weekly Zoom meetings. We ended up having a few crochet support sessions, several community hang-outs, and four educational presentations by Vassar professors!
During winter break and up to now, people have been making their own yarn creations to add to our community reef and delivering them to us in person and by mail. This week, we are excited to finally be bringing together the coral display in the Bridge building as the culmination of our collective efforts. On Thursday, April 1st our display will go up, and from 3pm to 6pm, we will have a special opening with live sea anemones, lots of crochet corals, and some tasty seaweed snacks to try!
To help get everyone excited about this awesome, interactive exhibition of our collective work we are going to be posting the videos of the presentations we had throughout the event. Keep a lookout for those links starting tomorrow, and get hyped for our in-person event on Thursday!
-Maya and the GC Coral team